High fur boots kept Catherine’s feet warm, but the air chilled her cheeks. As she hurried down the row, tears formed in her eyes. Most of the front porches had not been shoveled out. One or two had, including Father Gabe’s, the healer. A thoughtful, quiet man, if anyone needed him the way would be cleared.
Each cabin rested on a quarter to a half acre, the back being a large garden. People sat on their front stoops in warm weather, called out to one another, or gathered at Bettina’s stoop to sing. Winter drove everyone inward, reinforcing family ties or tensions, depending.
The last cabin, the large lodge, on the right sat a quarter mile from the first cabin, for the double row was long. The lodge had more distance from the living cabins. It faced the woods, which slanted a bit until finally dropping precipitously to the hard running creek below. Rock outcroppings attended this creek, a narrow footpath leading in both directions. Rarely used, when it was, it allowed slaves to visit one another at the plantations along the creek. Summers, long twilights propelled people to sociability, but most especially a young man courting a young lady. Sometimes if this resulted in marriage the couple might live together. If not, then the partners traveled on off days determined to see each other. Ovid wrote, “Amora vincit ominia.” Love conquers all, and it did.
Catherine was not thinking of love, but warmth. The hearth in the weaving lodge, big enough to stand in, threw off wondrous heat. Smoke spiraled straight upward from the large chimney. Bumbee was working. Bumbee didn’t think of what she did as work. She loved it, creating designs, using colors in novel ways, experimenting with wools and fabrics. The woman possessed an artistic gift.
Catherine threw open the door, too cold to knock. As she did, Mignon, shocked, stood up, overturning her stool.
Bumbee, startled, looked up from her loom. “Miss Catherine, Mignon was stirring up some warm milk. Would you like some or might you use some in coffee? We’ve made strong coffee.” Bumbee chattered as though this was the most natural thing in the world.
“I…I’d love some coffee.” Catherine sat on the curved maple chair that Bumbee’s husband, ever in disgrace, had made for her.
Mignon softly asked, “Milk or coffee with milk, Miss Catherine?”
“Coffee with milk, thank you.”
Once the coffee was delivered, Catherine held the cup in her hands, then began this discussion sideways. “Bumbee, I am freezing. I need a heavier shawl. Actually, I need to wear two shawls. This one and a heavy one overtop.”
“It’s going to be a long winter.” Bumbee pulled the shuttle down, the rhythm of her weaving consoling.
Glancing around, Catherine’s eye fell on a rich green wool in one of the squares holding materials. “What about that color?”
“Mmm, too thin. You need a heavier wool like the navy. Feel it.”
Catherine rose, put the coffee cup on a table made out of the same maplewood as the chair. Reaching the fabric, she felt it between her thumb and forefinger. “See what you mean.” Then she touched the wool in the next square, a deep maroon. “That would look wonderful on Rachel.”
“Everything looks wonderful on you and your sister.” Bumbee smiled as Catherine sat down again.
“Mignon.”
“Yes, Miss Catherine.”
“Does Mrs. Selisse, I mean Holloway, know you are here? After all, you may have been trapped by the storm.”
“No, Ma’am, she doesn’t, but she and Sheba want to get their hands on your wool.” Mignon stopped stirring, moved the pot away from the fire by lifting it off the wrought-iron rod, hanging it on another inside but at the edge of the huge fireplace.
“May I ask what you are doing here?”
Bumbee kept pulling down the shuttle, lifting it back up, humming to herself.
Mignon’s voice was clear. “I ran away.”
“Dear God,” Catherine whispered.
Bumbee spoke up. “She fell through the door the first day of the big storm. She hadn’t planned to come here but found the path from the creek up here, which is good or she would have froze to death.”
“Yes.” Catherine’s mind raced.
“I won’t bring harm to you. I promise I will be out of here once I can move through the snow.”
“Mignon, that’s a hopeful thought. If the authorities should visit here before that, we better come up with a good story, and I can’t think of one.” Catherine drank some coffee.
“I’m sorry, Miss Catherine. I never meant to bring danger. I was exhausted, my feet throbbed, they were so painful, so I followed the path upward. I didn’t know where I was. When I saw the lodge, I did.”
“Done is done.” Catherine sighed.
Maureen Selisse’s brutality, known throughout the county, infuriated people, but no one could do anything about it. As for Sheba, there were those who would happily kill her if they thought they could get away with it.
Catherine and Bumbee knew they had to protect Mignon until she could move. The fewer people that knew, the better, but any slave that would report a runaway would eventually be killed by others. Silence. Ever and always: silence.
“Miss Catherine, she can hide here. For now.” Bumbee stopped weaving.
Catherine nodded. “Let me talk to Bettina.”
None of them could have known or dreamed that Mignon’s fate would haunt the twenty-first century.
October 26, 2016 Wednesday
Harry stopped for a moment, rake in hand, at the base of the large marble statue, the grave marker for Francisco Selisse, murdered on September 11, 1784. Well-carved marble, tremendously expensive even in the eighteenth century, the Avenging Angel, flaming sword in hand, guarded the East of Eden. Francisco’s death was never avenged. Life went on as it always does.
A big pile of leaves giving off the distinct sneezy odor of fallen leaves awaited transfer to the canvas laid on the ground.
Harry leaned against the base of the huge statue, then straightened herself. “Susan.”
“What?” her best friend, also raking, replied.
“Come here a minute.”
Susan dutifully put down her rake, her pile quite large, joining Harry at the base of the impressive statue.
Putting her finger on the base, the slender Harry asked, “Do you know what these little scratched squares mean? I kind of remember them from the few times we played in the graveyard, but mostly we avoided this nasty angel.”
“He’s frightening even now.” Susan smiled, then studied the scratched squares. “I have no idea. Seven of them, some look more recent than others. Not like our time, but you know.”
“It’s an old family graveyard. Someone must know or have known.” Harry changed the subject. “Your grandmother looks well.”
Penny Holloway lost her husband, in his nineties, on August 15, 2016. A few years younger than her husband, a former Virginia governor, a dynamic man, a World War Two hero, she missed him terribly. However, Penny was not a woman to dwell on sorrows, much as she felt them. She continued her work for nonprofits, attended to her gardening and her two daughters, one being Susan’s mother. Her “girls” were in their early sixties. Time moves along at blinding speed, except when you are waiting for a check.
“She does. Thanks again for helping me plant those spring bulbs. She loves to see them pop up. Well, she loves fall, too.” Susan returned to her leaves, raking them onto her canvas.
Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, and Tucker, intending to be of assistance, followed them to the graveyard when they began working. All three fell asleep under a towering oak easily three centuries old. Little moats of dust spiraled into the air as they breathed out.